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JUNE 1 2017 - 9:34PM
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Bernardi seeks to challenge, split the NSW Liberals
James Robertson
James Robertson
69 reading now
Over a banquet of tea-smoked duck and ocean trout sashimi, Senator Cory Bernardi
made a sales pitch for a conservative uprising on Thursday.
In attendance were prominent and former Liberal right wingers David Flint, the H
oward government communications mandarin and national monarchist campaigner, Joh
n Ruddick, a former presidential candidate who recently quit the party but famou
sly maintains a mailing list of ten thousand of its members, Tony Abbott ally an
d ex-adviser, Walter Villatora and recently suspended commentator and ex-MP Ross
Cameron.
Cory Bernardi was in Sydney to woo Liberals to his new political party.
Cory Bernardi was in Sydney to woo Liberals to his new political party. Photo: J
essica Hromas
The day after he applied to register a NSW branch of his new Australian Conserva
tives, Senator Bernardi made it clear he expects to compete with the Liberals no
t just for votes but defections.
"NSW is our [party's] largest state," said Senator Bernardi, who resigned from t
he Liberals last year. "We're already at 40 per cent of the membership of the [N
SW] Liberal party.
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"We'll field candidates and do everything we can to get them elected".
Senator Bernardi's party, which merged with Family First in April, claims a payi
ng membership of more than 4000 in NSW. The NSW Liberals say they have more than
10,000 paying members.
Senator Bernardi, in Sydney this week, was understood to have begun the process
of applying to the Electoral Commission to establish a local branch of the party
which would allow it to run candidates in state elections.
That will worry NSW Liberals privately fretting about the party's vulnerability
to a challenge from the right of politics at the next state election. Internal p
olling is said to show the party is on track to lose one or more seats to One Na
tion.
David Flint (left) dined with Bernardi on Thursday.
David Flint (left) dined with Bernardi on Thursday. Photo: Jessica Hromas
Thursday's lunch with senior Liberal and ex-Liberal figures will also heighten s
peculation that Senator Bernardi is seeking to capitalise on dissatisfaction wit
hin the Liberal party's conservative right wing by courting defections.
Senator Bernardi's new force is rumoured to have links to some of Australia's mo
st lucrative political donors, including Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehar
t.
Once ascendant in NSW, the party's conservative right faction known to its detra
ctors as the "Taliban" now exerts dwindling influence over party affairs in NSW
and claims one vote on its ruling 21-member state executive
Right faction members allege the party's moderate wing and "head office", or its
administrative apparatus, exerts undue control over who gets to choose who repr
esents the party in Parliament as an MP.
The conservative right advocates instead a "plebiscite" model that has party mem
bers vote to choose candidates.
The party will debate its future path on that question at a conference next mont
h. But Senator Bernardi said he would pitch to conservative Liberals the chance
to join a party that already offered members participation in party affairs.
"We also have the values and principles that appeal to Liberal voters," Senator
Bernardi said.
The NSW Liberal party declined to comment.
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